


A Good Book Is Hard To Find

by ohmyfae



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Campy as Hell, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Romance Novelist Ignis, to real relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 04:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14560995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: Ignis Scientia, a new writer with one breakaway hit under his belt, is just starting his new novel when he hits the worst case of writer's block yet. In order to find inspiration for the fictional fake-relationship trope he's crafting, he asks an old friend, Gladiolus Amicitia, to go on a few fake dates with him on his own; You know, for research.This totally won't backfire at all.





	1. Chapter 1

“There is no such thing,” Lalia P. Hankwell said, looking up over her designer glasses at the Lucian Romance Writers Awards, “as a true case of writer’s block.”

Ignis Scientia paused the video on his computer, stared blankly at the wall for a solid three minutes, and dropped his head in his hands. 

Of course Lalia P. Hankwell would say that there wasn’t such a thing as writer’s block. Lalia P. Hankwell probably got up in the morning in her “cozy, quite cramped, I swear,” villa in Altissia to the sound of birds chirping at her window. The _birds_ were probably hand-delivered by shirtless men on gondolas. Lalia P. Hankwell probably got to work on an old typewriter made entirely out of gold-plated brass. Lalia Fucking P. Hankwell _probably_ had a team of _fucking_ ghost writers chained to her spacious, old-country basement.

Ignis’ phone buzzed. Another notification. That, he knew, was an email from his agent: An earnest, overworked man named Prompto whose emails were full of emojis, far too many exclamation marks, and enough guilt to make even an elderly matriarch step back and say, “Now, hold on…”

It was Ignis’ fault, of course. His first novel, _Pounded in the Astral,_ was a breakaway hit in an industry that churned out more unknown authors than stars in the sky. He had his own press tour, his book hit the top of the charts in three different publications, and he even had a nomination for the LRWAs. But he’d fallen into the trap that all new authors ran the risk of stumbling across, and was now trying to cash in too many promises, too many sequels, hammering out hundreds of thousands of words with no substance. 

He was stuck. 

Ignis pushed aside an empty can of Ebony and fumbled for his phone. His uncle didn’t have a head for the genre, Noctis was more interested in nonfiction, and poor Gladio was probably sick of hearing Ignis complain. Still… When the white, blank page of a word document beckoned on one hand, and the possibility of brunch beckoned on the other… Ignis punched in Gladio’s number.

Gladio picked up on the first ring. “Hey, Iggy.” His voice sounded strained, his breath harsh. “Ready to chuck your computer again?”

“Gods, yes.” Ignis leaned on his elbows, running a hand through his gelled hair. “Brunch at ten?”

“Make it eleven. At the gym with Prince Charming.”

“Hey, Specs!” Noct’s voice was tinny and sharp. “Don’t overdo the Ebony, man.”

“Tell him _thank you, mother,_ ” Ignis said, and Gladio laughed. Ignis smiled, hung up the phone, and gently closed his laptop. Yes. This was the right decision. A little fresh air, a nice talk with Gladio, and he could get back to work with a new perspective.

 

“I’m doomed, Gladiolus,” Ignis whispered, steepling his fingers before his face while Gladio worked his way through an éclair. “Why did I tell Prompto I’d write a book about a fake relationship? It’s… It’s the least believable trope in the genre.”

“Nah.” Gladio licked chocolate off his thumb. “I think that honor goes to all the virgin women who become sex fiends after their first cock.”

“Classy,” Ignis said. He sighed. “I just don’t see it, Gladio. Why would anyone try to keep up the pretense in the first place?”

“What, virginity?”

“Focus. Fake relationships.” Ignis drew a line in the foam of his coffee. “The critics said my first book was refreshing. Honest. I can’t just throw myself into the same tired old clichés and expect to coast. This has to be real. It has to be a true, straightforward story—“

“About two guys faking it,” Gladio said. “Sorry, Ignis,” he added, when Ignis glowered at him, “but you can’t really do research on this kind of thing, can you? Closest you can get to are arranged marriages, or maybe…”

He trailed off, momentarily distracted by the cream oozing from his éclair. Ignis watched him for a moment, the gears in his mind shaking loose the debris of a book’s worth of garbage, and slowly lowered his hands.

“Gladio.”

“Mrnn?” Gladio looked up, mouth full of pastry. “Whfht?”

“Gladio, you know how I took that Seaman’s Course for the Astrals book.”

“Please don’t,” Gladio said, swallowing thickly. “I’m tryin’ to be mature, here.”

Ignis batted a hand at him, and Gladio sighed, waiting patiently as Ignis’ thoughts barreled towards their horrifying conclusion. Ignis took a deep breath. “What I need, Gladio, is _experience.”_

There was a long, heavy silence. “Iggy.” Gladio picked up his napkin. “You’ve been writing since you were twelve.”

“Not that. I need to go on a date,” Ignis said. Gladio’s brows rose. “A test date, to see what it would be like. How it would feel. Engaging in typically romantic activities with a platonic—“

“You’re gonna ask me,” Gladio said. “Aren’t you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You’re gonna wear me down.” Gladio’s voice was low, leaden with despair. “I can tell. I see it in your eyes.”

Ignis shrugged. “Well, we’re both unattached—“

“Thanks for the reminder—“

“And I _do_ owe you for treating me to brunch—“

“ _That’s_ what I’m doin’, huh?”

Ignis leaned in. “Don’t make me beg, Gladio.”

Gladio sat back in his chair. In the back of Ignis’ mind, the blank slate that was his novel was starting to reshape itself, the tentative threads of a story slowly weaving themselves into a knot that almost looked appealing. All he needed was this. One date. One evening, to get the _feel_ for it, to get started…

“Fine,” Gladio said. Ignis beamed, and Gladio dug for his wallet, muttering softly to himself. “The things I’ll do for a good book.”

 

\---

 

The Duck Pond of Insomnia was not, in fact, a pond, nor did it typically contain ducks. It was a large, manmade lake formed in the shape of a lotus, reflecting the ruins of what, according to Noctis, used to be the tomb of an ancient king. He was rumored to have slain the daemons that emerged after the collapse of the Solheim empire, brought the sun back from wherever suns went to die in such fanciful stories, and promptly dissolved the monarchy. 

“He’s supposed to be like, my hundredth and something-or-other granddad,” Noct told Ignis once, when they were slowly getting trashed in honor of Noct’s late father. “That’s what dad always said. It’s in the name. Caelum. Light. King of Light. And guess what my _dad’s_ first name was, and _his_ dad’s first name, and his mother’s before him? Thank gods my mom intervened.”

Ignis examined the tomb overlooking the lake, and wondered if any of it were true. Noct was getting his PHD in Ancient History, so he supposed he’d know. 

But that wasn’t what Ignis was there for. 

“Swans at ten o clock,” Gladio said. 

He hadn’t considered the swans. The swans had invaded the Duck Pond some fifty years before, multiplied, and were now a fixture of flapping, honking rage, terrorizing the locals and upending paper boats on new years. Ignis frantically pedaled, leaning into Gladio’s side as a flock of swans slowly drifted towards them, radiating menace. He and Gladio were on one of the barely used paddle boats rented by the hour, and so far, even with their joint efforts, were chugging along at a good half a mile an hour.

“Tell me again why this is a good first date,” Gladio said, sweat staining his tank top as they slowly fled the oncoming swarm. 

“The characters in the book are trying to solve a murder,” Ignis panted. He could feel the tickle of sweat on his own back, soaking into his button-up as the swans approached like an oncoming storm. There were more of them, too, peeling away from smaller flocks to trail behind Ignis and Gladio’s bright yellow boat. One of them honked, and Gladio grit his teeth. “They have to meet somewhere they can be watched, but is still secluded enough to talk.”

“Couldn’t just go to their apartments?” Gladio muttered. Water frothed behind the boat, but it still moved along at a crawl. A swan craned its graceful neck down to bite at the ripples spreading in their wake. 

“On the first date? Gladio, really.”

“It’s a modern world, Ignis. Hookups exist.”

Ignis glanced over his shoulder. “They’re gaining on us, Gladio.” One of the swans honked again, and there was a note of urgency in the way it flapped its expansive wings. “You could say we’ve run afoul of some local malcontents.”

“Not the time, Iggy,” Gladio said, pedaling faster. 

“This may be our swan song, Gladio.”

Gladio shot him a look so full of miserable, long-suffering despair that Ignis laughed. He also, unfortunately, stopped pedaling, which meant that the boat was easing its way in a short circle. 

The swans, faced at last with a challenge from a hated enemy, erupted into a flurry of honking. 

“Fuck,” Gladio said, and grabbed Ignis by the collar. Ignis only had a moment to react before he was thrown overboard, into the murky, green depths of the Lotus pond. Scum slipped under his shoes, and he went down facefirst as the swans descended on their empty boat, screeching their fury. 

What followed was possibly the most embarrassing attempt at an escape in the history of Lucis. 

First, Gladio plunged a hand into the water, dragging Ignis up by the neck like a drowning cat. Then a swan took that moment to notice one of their targets getting away, so before Ignis could sputter a curse, Gladio had him pressed face-down to the bottom of the pond. Above them, webbed feet spiraled, a beak darted into the water with the hatred of a sentient, daemonic knife with eyes, and they had to crawl their way across the bottom until they could emerge a few feet away. 

When they finally got to the dock, there were six swans occupying their abandoned boat, watching them with the sharp eyes of true conquerors, and Ignis was covered in slime.

“So,” Gladio said, as Ignis peeled off his shirt behind the rental shack. “On a scale of one to ten, how romantic do you think that was?”

“I wore this shirt to the LRWA’s,” Ignis moaned, holding the dripping, scum-covered wreck of his second best shirt over the grass. 

“Don’t think getting attacked by swans counts as a meet-cute,” Gladio said. “But it’s close. What’s next on the fake date agenda? Mobbed by squirrels? Tell me it’s mobbed by squirrels.”

“Chocobos, actually,” Ignis said, a little testily. At least he had on an undershirt, but it was too thin to be much use. It clung to his skin as he moved, and he could see the outline of his pecs through the fabric. “They do couples’ rides in the rose gardens.”

Gladio looked at Ignis, his hair dripping in his eyes, pond scum staining his trousers, and back to the swan-occupied paddle boat. “You know what,” he said, shoving his hands in his own soaked pants. “How about we save chocobos for date two.”

Ignis dashed water from his face. “Date two?” he asked. 

“Sure.” Gladio grinned. “Don’t think our high-speed chase really did the trick, you know?” He swung an arm around Ignis’ shoulder and marched them up the grass, leaving the Duck Pond behind. “For now, let’s get noodles, and you can tell me all about this fictional murder you’re planning.”

They trudged up the hill, passing the tomb of the so-called ancient king, which lay in silence, temporarily ignored by the local wildlife in favor of the swan-laden paddle boat slowly sinking into the dark water of the lake.


	2. Chapter 2

“To create the perfect cake from scratch,” said the woman at the front of the small, homey classroom in the back of Josephine’s Yoga And Grill, “One must first create the universe.”

“She stole that line, right?” Gladio whispered. He was wearing a massive black apron with a stencil of a man holding plates of chicken and wine on the front, and his arms were caked in flour. “She definitely stole it.”

“Kill me,” Ignis moaned. 

A storm front had settled over Insomnia, turning all the quiet, charming chocobo riding paths to rivers of mud, and so Ignis and Gladio had been forced to come up with a last minute second fake date on the fly: Which was why Ignis was currently standing at a counter with a line of other earnest, slightly bewildered couples, staring at the only properly-made angel food cake in the building. 

“It ain’t that bad,” Gladio whispered. 

“She told us to pour the egg whites into the flour _before_ we beat them, Gladio,” Ignis hissed. It was the cardinal sin of angel food cake: The line that must not be crossed. And yet this woman, who could grill the best damn steak in the city and bend herself in a pretzel at the same time, was unleashing a force of chaos on the unsuspecting public and calling it cuisine.

“You know what’s missing,” Gladio said, as the instructor led them through a series of steps Ignis had already passed in the correct order. Ignis gave him a baleful look, and Gladio dipped a finger in the vat of buttercream frosting. “It’s in all the movies, Iggy.”

Ignis stared at the movement of Gladio’s finger in horrified fascination. “No.”

“Come on. You gotta laugh, it’s in the rules.” Gladio reached for Ignis’ nose just as Ignis turned his face aside. This resulted in a dollop of frosting smearing over Ignis’ cheekbone, drawing a clean stripe all the way to the fine hairs that flared over his glasses. 

“Okay, now you throw flour at me,” Gladio said. Ignis scowled, wiping off the frosting with a towel. “Romance 101, Ignis. If you don’t have a food fight, how’re you gonna know you’re in love?”

“They _aren’t_ in love,” Ignis snapped. Gladio stood back, arms crossed over his impossibly large chest, smile wry and fond. “They’re on the search for a murderer. They won’t fall in love until, until…”

“Date six,” Gladio said. “Probably.”

“Exactly!” Ignis turned back to his cake, and let out an indignant yowl when another blob of frosting was pushed onto his nose. “Blast it, you son of a—“

“Gentlemen!” the instructor cried, but Ignis was already practically climbing Gladio, wrapping an arm around his neck. They froze, Ignis’ foot on the counter, Gladio’s arms around Ignis’ waist, frosting dripping down Ignis’ chin to land on the ridiculous apron. 

“Excuse me,” Ignis said, slowly sliding down the length of Gladio’s body. “My _lover_ was trying to inflict a cliché on me.”

“Clichés make the world go round, baby,” Gladio said. “Brunch?”

“It’s seven,” Ignis said, ignoring the instructor’s withering glare. “You can’t call something brunch just because it involves a crepe.” 

“My love,” Gladio said, to the room at large. He kept an arm around Ignis as they fled the class’ shocked stares, leaving a faint dusting of flour in their wake. 

He was still holding Ignis when they emerged into the dark streets of Insomnia, right when Noctis, heading home on his bike from the gym, swerved around a pothole to pass them by. 

For a split second, Ignis and Noctis locked eyes. Noct looked down at Gladio’s hand at Ignis’ waist, at the flour on his arms, the slight trail of frosting that Ignis hadn’t managed to wipe clean. Then, because he wasn’t watching the road whatsoever, Noctis promptly ran his bike into a gutter and went flying. 

“Shit!” Gladio released Ignis, and the two of them raced for Noct, who was rolling to his side on the sidewalk. His arm was a bloody mess and there was a cut on his temple, but the damage looked superficial, at least. Ignis helped him sit up while Gladio retrieved his bike from the bike lane. 

Noct blinked slowly up at Ignis, mouth open. “You and Gladio,” he said. 

“Hush.” Ignis held up a hand. “How many fingers, Noct?”

“Three. You and Gladio, Specs, you and Gladio were, uh. He was holding your.”

“Nice one, prince charming,” Gladio said. Noct swung his head towards Gladio, eyes narrowed into slits, and pinched his lips together. “That was a pretty nasty fall. Good job with the tuck and roll, though.”

“When’d this happen?” Noct asked. Gladio paused, slowly sliding a careful look Ignis’ way. “You and Ignis. I thought _you_ said he was out of your—“

“A week,” Gladio said, in a tight, desperate voice. Ignis felt a flush of panic rise to his neck. “R-right, Iggy?”

“Yes,” Ignis said, just as shortly. “A week. Of course.”

“Huh.” Noct got up, dripping blood onto the concrete, and yanked at the hoodie tied around his waist. “You’ve really lowered your standards, Specs.”

Gladio kicked at a bent spoke in the front wheel of the bike. “And he says this when he’s too injured to get his ass kicked.”

“Love you, too, big guy.” Noct hissed and clumsily wrapped the hoodie around his arm. “I think I got this. I’m a few blocks away.”

Ignis lurched forward. “At least let us—“

“Nah.” Noct wrenched the bike out of Gladio’s grip and swung a leg over the saddle. “I don’t wanna get in the way of your date.”

“You aren’t—“

“It isn’t—“

Noct pushed off, wobbling uneasily down the crowded sidewalk, seemingly unaware that pedestrians had to fling themselves to the side of buildings and shop windows to avoid crashing into him. Ignis let out a long, weary sigh, and Gladio patted his shoulder in sympathy. 

“Well, this went down like a lead balloon,” Ignis said. “I’ll have to tell him tonight, or the news will be all over the city by morning.”

Gladio nodded. “But brunch first.”

“The sun is _down_ , Gladio!”

“Late brunch,” Gladio said, grinning in that way he always did when he knew he was going to come out the other side with a crepe in hand. He held out an arm and bowed, regal as a courtier from some of Ignis’ colleagues’ historical novels. Ignis rolled his eyes and looped an arm in his, and the two of them jaywalked across the street, lured by the promise of pastries. 

But between Gladio nearly upending the table to take a picture of his food for Iris to see, Ignis talking his ear off about the proper way to bake a cake between mouthfuls of strawberry, and a late night detour while they discussed fictional murders, it was hard to keep his focus. When he came home, Ignis threw his phone on the bedside table and collapsed on his bed, dragging his laptop over the sheets and into his lap. He fell asleep with his hands on the keyboard, the first chapter of his rough draft done, and his phone—and Noctis—entirely forgotten.

 

\---

 

The first thing Ignis did when he woke the next morning was to boot up his dying computer, blink blearily at the glowing white document, and squint at the last line of his work from the night before. 

_“My god,” Nyx said, his massive pecs squeezing together as he surveyed the scene before him. “This man didn’t go on a Lord Byron-influenced sex-spree, Libertus. He was murdered.”_

_“With sex?” Libertus asked. His biceps flexed sympathetically._

_“No,” said Nyx (edit this later. Should he mutter? Why would he be muttering?). “With poison.”_

“I’m never getting another award nomination in my life,” Ignis said, and, because the enemy of any writer was high-speed wifi, pulled up his twitter. 

There were forty-six new notifications. 

“No,” Ignis said, clicking on the first. It was Prompto. Prompto, the man he trusted, the man who looked at his first manuscript, shrugged, and gave it a chance when over a dozen other publishers turned it down. Prompto, with that smug, ridiculous smirk in his icon, releasing a string of tweets that began with:

@PromptoARGNT  
Hot tip! New romance superstar Ignis Scientia (of Pounded in the Astrals fame) found cavorting with hot young twunk. Who is mystery man?

@PromptoARGNT  
Just kidding, we all know. His BFF! Sensitive as a flower but jacked like a hottie from @MurderofCrowes’ new hit, The Highlander Who Set My Town On Fire. 

Ignis mechanically scrolled down the page. Prompto had an avid following, though admittedly most of them tended to retweet his workout photos and late night selfies than trawl through his publishing pitches. Still, an unsettling number seemed to have a vested interest in what Prompto kept calling a tattooed “twunk from the city.”

Including Gladio.

@ProfGladiolus  
WHO ARE YOU CALLING A TWUNK

@PromptoARGNT  
You see any others around bb :3 :3 :3 :3

@ProfGladiolus  
Nice one, asshole. Also, you keep trying to call yourself an otter, but you need to come to the realization that you have three chest hairs MAX

@PromptoARGNT  
Yeah, well, you’re not exactly a bear, my dude

@PrinceCharming  
The fuck is an otter

Ignis nearly screamed.

When he thought to grab his phone at last, there were a good five missed calls from Gladio, another ten from Noct, and three from Prompto. Prompto’s ranged from a cheery “Congrats, dude, can’t wait to share this!” to “Oh my god oh my god I didn’t know you wanted to keep this private please tell Gladio not to come to my house and kill me please I LIKE MY FACE.” 

Ignis slowly set his phone down. He stood, made his bed, and carefully, methodically dressed to go out. Then he sat down at his worn, empty dining room table and placed his head in his hands. 

The door knocked, and he nearly startled out of his chair. 

“Iggy?” Gladio’s voice was muffled. “The door?”

Ignis sighed. He couldn’t very well blame Gladio for this—It was his fault for not calling Noct the other night in the first place. So he crossed the living room, swung open the door, and stepped aside. 

“Fanks,” Gladio said, around a strap of plastic in his teeth. It was attached to a bag with a bright cartoon mascot on the front, probably one from Iris’ collection, and he had a cup of coffee in each hand. He passed one to Ignis, and Ignis inhaled the fragrant steam rising from the lid. 

“Ebony,” he said, in surprise. 

“Your favorite,” Gladio said. He set down the bag and shuffled through it. “I know you say you like it black, but I also know you sneak a little creamer in when no one’s looking, so I mighta done the same. Sit down.”

Ignis was too bemused to argue. He sat, and realized, possibly a few years late, that Gladio really was rather broad in the chest, no matter what Prompto had to say on the matter. He had on a thin black tank top, which was twisted a little to the side, revealing more of the impressive tattoo that had taken up most of Gladio’s savings when they were in college. Ignis leaned forward, and nearly mashed his face into Gladio’s arm. 

“Sorry,” Gladio said. He set a Tupperware container down next to Ignis’ coffee. “I know you always complain about the eggs at Tartar Us’ not having the right blend of spices, so I cut out the middle-man and made it at home. Figured you might need the comfort food. The bread’s from Tartar’s, though.” He plopped a box of soft banana bread between them and sat on the other side of the table, watching Ignis expectantly. 

“I’m not going to explode, Gladio,” Ignis said, after a minute. Gladio blinked quickly. 

“Oh.”

“My apologies.” Ignis rummaged in the bag for a plastic fork. “I appreciate the gesture. It’s… nice.”

Certainly none of Ignis’ _real_ boyfriends—what little there were—ever thought to make him breakfast. Once this was over, he thought, he’d have to raise his standards. Get someone a little more like—

“I told Prompto to take it down,” Gladio said, jarring Ignis out of his thoughts. “So did Noct, even if he doesn’t know why. But I think the damage is done.” Ignis pointed to his full mouth. “Yeah, okay. So if you want to end this, we can. We can stage a break-up. Make it dramatic, maybe, in front of Prompto.”

Ignis swallowed. “That would be…” It would mean, of course, that the two of them would have to lie low for a while. No more weekly brunches, no occasional visits at the gym, no late night calls from Gladio to remind Ignis to get out and have a little fun once in a while. Meetups at Noct’s would be awkward, stilted, a silence maintained out of necessity until they could feign a truce. “Maybe one more date,” he said. 

Gladio went very still. 

“We can’t fold right away,” Ignis said, thinking fast. “Prompto will think it’s his fault. So. Maybe one more. Or two, just to be safe.” 

“Sure,” Gladio said, in a slow, careful voice. “Sure, that works.”

“Just to keep up appearances,” Ignis said. He reached for the bread, paused, and passed a slice to Gladio. “Here. I know you like the heel, though god knows why.”

“Chewier that way,” Gladio said, and his smile returned, twisting at the corner in a hint of a smirk. Ignis smiled back. 

“Of course.”


	3. Chapter 3

"I gotta say," Iris said, sidling over on her bright blue chocobo, "I'm glad you decided to lower your standards for Gladdy."

Ignis tightened his grip on his chocobo's tack. It was a brilliant day, the riding paths awash with sunlight and dotted with swaths of wildflowers, and Iris Amicitia looked like a bewildered goth stumbling onto the set of a regency film. The only thing she wore that wasn't maroon or black was a large, floppy straw hat, which she told Gladio gave her _mysterious allure._ It kept slipping off the back of her head, and she held onto it with grim determination, smiling up at Ignis from its pockmarked shadow.

"I don't think lowering my standards is correct," Ignis said. He glanced at Gladio, who was a few feet ahead, picking burrs out of his chocobo's claws. Iris snorted.

"I'm his sister, so I'm allowed to be honest." She winked. "Really, though. I'm glad you guys hooked up. He never even cared to tell me the other guys' names, you know, but he's letting me chaperone _your_ date."

"Iris. I've known you since you were born."

"Not my point," Iris said. She adjusted her hat. "I mean it's good to see Gladdy being serious about someone." 

Iris clucked to her chocobo and set off at a trot towards Gladio. Gladio smiled at her, and when his gaze turned to Ignis, his eyes crinkled in that fond, familiar way they did whenever he and Ignis were sharing a particularly amusing joke. Guilt tugged at Ignis, heavy and tight, and his smile back was awkward and thin.

He called on his uncle Basil that afternoon.

Basil was an eternal bachelor, with the tight curls of his mother's side and a penchant for the kind of puns that made family dinners something to be feared. His small apartment had been a haven for Ignis when the Scientia home grew too crowded or tense, and Ignis had written his first, thankfully unpublished novel sitting at his kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and a borrowed laptop. It was where he came when he needed to think, and Basil never tried to push him in any one direction. He just listened, and asked quiet, careful questions, letting Ignis make up his own mind.

Usually, that is.

"I heard from your mother that you're seeing that friend of yours," Basil said, after dinner was done and the dishes were drying. He flipped on the espresso machine and smiled at Ignis.

"That may be why I'm here," Ignis said. Basil raised an eyebrow and fetched two mugs from the cabinets.

"Thought so," he said. "Panicking, are we? Well, it's to be expected." 

Ignis paused, mouth open.

"You always were a little short-sighted when it comes to your own feelings," Basil said. "I'd say you've been holding a torch for this Gladiolus fellow for... Oh, you must have been twelve..."

"Hardly," Ignis said, though it came out more as a squawk of outrage than the dignified rebuttal he expected. "I've never--"

"Gladio's the smartest guy I know, Uncle Basil," Basil said. "Almost smarter than Noct. Gladio's dating this horrid woman, Uncle Basil. I don't think that journalist is any good for him, Uncle Basil. He--"

"That was concern," Ignis said. "For a friend."

"Really?" Basil looked from Ignis' clenched fingers to the espresso machine. "Better go decaf for this one."

"I never held a torch," Ignis insisted.

"Ignis." Basil leaned on the kitchen counter. "You know you're my favorite nephew."

"I'm your only nephew."

"Yes, well. I love your mother something terrible, but she has the same problem you do. Most of us Scientias have it. We're damn good at analyzing the hell out of anyone but ourselves. If your mum hadn't told your mother that she was romantically attracted to her, you would have never come along, and I'd still be living with my sister. A thoroughly miserable sister, because she loved your mum from the moment she met her. Just didn't know love was the word for it."

"Basil, I write romance novels. I'm fairly sure I know--"

"Do you?" Basil asked. "And what would you say has been going on between you and Gladio since the age of thirteen, mm? Don't answer me right away, thank you."

Ignis closed his mouth. He mutely took a mug of coffee from Basil, then sat at the counter for a long moment, letting the mug cool against his fingers.

It was true that Ignis might have harbored a bit of a schoolboy crush on Gladio, once. But that had run its course, because Gladio had started dating that girl, what was her name... The one with the braids, who hated Iris and laughed at Gladio's taste in books. And Ignis had decided that friendship was no less important, so he'd merely... pushed it back. He came to Gladio for advice when his own dates went poorly, they had sleepovers and late night meet-ups at the horrible cafe down the street, and when Ignis realized he wanted to be a writer, Gladio was the first person he called...

"That book you wrote," Basil said, after what felt like an aeon. "The one with the name I can't repeat to your mum. The retired fireman with the tragic past seemed pretty familiar."

"Pardon?" Ignis tried to clear his muddled thoughts. "You mean Pelna?"

"If you could draw a picture," Basil said, "what do you think he'd look like?"

Ignis frowned. The love interest in his debut was, well, solidly built like most in the genre, but he had a few quirks. A soft side, hidden beneath the machismo required for survival in his former career. A love for flowers. A tattoo of a phoenix on his arm, honey-gold eyes, a scar on his...

A scar on his cheek, just like...

"Give it time," Basil said.

"Oh god," Ignis moaned. He covered his face with both hands. "Oh god, I've been in love with him for years."

"Like mother, like son," Basil said, and dug in his cabinets. He pulled out a small bottle of liquor. "Altissian coffee, Ignis. It'll do wonders."

"Yes, please."

Ignis nearly cut out the middle-man and grabbed the bottle. He waited for Basil to finish and inhaled half the mug in one go. "How did I not know?" he asked. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I suspected you'd find out on your own." Basil grimaced. "Or that your mum would be a good influence on you. Have you talked to them about it?"

"I can't," Ignis whispered, his voice hollow with dread.

"Because?"

"Because Gladio and I aren't... actually dating."

Basil froze, slowly straightened again, and added a dash of liquid courage to his own mug.

"Oh, dear."


	4. Chapter 4

_Rain cascaded over the pillars of the old church, blowing in great gusts over the stone floor. Nyx stood tragically (NOTE: Show, don’t tell? Fuck it) under the flimsy safety of their shadows, water pouring down his sodden hair, mingling with his tears._

_“I don’t understand,” Libertus said, “how you could keep this from me all this time. Is that what this was? A way for you to live out your fantasies?”_

_“That’s not it,” Nyx said. His pecs squeezed mournfully under the sheer, thin fabric of his shirt. “I didn’t realize it, Lib. I thought—“_

_“We’re done,” Libertus said. “You can find someone else to lie to. I’ll look for the murderer on my own. Gladio’s going to hate your fucking guts when he finds out, you’ll never finish this goddamned book, and someone is going to come and take all your awards away in the middle of the night and send you back to Jester Publishing, where you’ll write baby-daddy serials under a penname for the rest of your miserable life.”_

Ignis closed his laptop. 

“This probably isn’t healthy,” he told his empty kitchen. Thankfully, the kitchen didn’t respond. He barely resisted rubbing his red, sleep-deprived eyes, staggered to the fridge, and downed the last of his canned Ebony before turning back to the laptop. No, writing was out of the question today. _Anything_ was out of the question, anything but talking to Gladio. Telling him the truth. Ruining their friendship forever. 

Fuck.

Ignis found Gladio in the locker room of the Highwind Gym, hunched over a bench with a small paperback book in his hands. His shoes were off, his shirt discarded on the seat next to him, and his chest glistened, still damp from the shower. Ignis stopped at the door, watching a bead of water trail between Gladio’s pecs, and grit his teeth. 

Gladio glanced up and slammed the book shut. Ignis got a glimpse of an embossed cover—was Gladio reading a _romance_ novel?—before the book was hastily stuffed into a black gym bag and covered with a pair of shorts. 

“Hey,” Gladio said. “How’re… How’s the book?”

“What?” 

“The book,” Gladio said, a little slower. “The one you’re writing.”

“Oh. Of course.” Ignis tried not to think about his manuscript, which now had red annotations on every margin, angry notes in all caps that declared the characters too foolish and bullheaded to simply _talk_ to each other. “It’s going.”

Gladio’s brows went up. “Stuck, huh? You need, uh. You need more experience?”

“Ah, no.” Ignis gingerly sat on the very edge of the bench, putting a good three feet between himself and Gladio’s bulging biceps. “I need advice, actually.”

“Alright.” Gladio turned, swinging one leg over the bench to straddle it, which. Oh. Oh, no. It was one thing, Ignis realized, to come to terms with the fact that he’d always admired Gladio, always yearned for something more. But he hadn’t taken into account the _other_ brand of yearning, which reared its head just enough for Ignis to feel a rush of heat rise to his cheeks. 

“Say one of the men starts to fall in love,” Ignis said. “Which, well, that’s a given, considering the genre. But he finds out that he’s always rather fancied the other man, but he doesn’t want to put their friendship at risk by revealing his feelings. However, if they continue the charade, that would make the dates merely a deception, leading to potential fallout.”

“Fallout’s dramatic,” Gladio said. “Go for that.”

“But.” Ignis felt the stirrings of panic shortening his breath. “But what if I want to have a happy—what if they need a happy ending? Can’t they just talk to eachother?”

“In real life? Sure.” Gladio shrugged. “But no one wants to read a book where people just talk to each other all the time.”

Ignis lowered his brows. “Dozens of fanfiction sites would claim otherwise, I assure you.” Gladio smirked, and he pressed on. “Why _don’t_ they talk, though? One of them has been in love with the other for years. What reason would he have not to say anything from the start?”

Gladio, to Ignis’ surprise, wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe he’s respecting the other guy’s space. Maybe he hasn’t gotten any hints that the other guy likes him back, so he doesn’t want to take that chance.”

“But _communication,_ Gladio!” Ignis slapped a hand on the bench. “What good is a relationship where both of them are damn fools who won’t _say_ anything?”

Gladio’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze finally fixed on Ignis’. “Are we still talkin’ in hypotheticals, Iggy?”

“Don’t think so,” said a voice at Ignis’ back. They both turned, and Ignis immediately regretted it. Noct stood at the entrance to the showers, stark naked, with a towel hanging around his shoulders. Ignis averted his eyes, and Gladio groaned. “Oh, shut up, I thought this place was empty.” Ignis caught a flash of skin as Noct passed him, heading for his locker. “So what’s the deal? Are you guys fighting or something?”

“Working on a book,” Gladio said. 

“Uh huh. Biography, right?” Noct shimmied into his boxers. “I mean, it fits. Before you guys hooked up—“

“Noct,” Gladio said, in a desperate voice. 

“Gladio had a hopeless, disgusting crush on you for like, ten years. Twelve years. Probably the moment you looked at each other.”

Ignis and Gladio froze. Ignis’ mind fell back, careening into an empty pit, struggling to catch flailing strands of reason amidst the endless screaming.

“It’s nice, though,” Noct said, oblivious to the two men stuck in a rictus of horror behind him. “I don’t have to listen to Gladio moan about how out of this world you are, and _you_ can stop looking at him like you’re a deer in the—“

Gladio stood. 

“Gladio,” Ignis said. “Wait.”

“Gotta get home,” Gladio said. His voice came out sharp, and Noct turned in confusion. “Pick up Iris.”

“From _home?_ ” Noct asked. But Gladio was already shoving his remaining clothes in his bag, hefting it over his shoulder. Ignis stood, but Gladio just strode past him, gaze straight ahead, mouth pinched in a grim line. Noct looked at Ignis and gestured at the swinging locker-room door. “The hell, Specs?”

“Thank you,” Ignis said, and Noct blinked at his acerbic tone. “You’ve done a marvelous job, Noct.”

“Iggy?” Noct’s voice called after him as Ignis made for the door. “A job doing _what?_ The hell is wrong with you two?”

“More than you know,” Ignis muttered, and slammed the locker room door behind him.

 

\---

 

Ignis walked out of the gym and directly into the middle of a torrential downpour. 

Cars floundered in potholes filled with murky rainwater and runoff. The buildings down the street disappeared behind sheets of rain and wind, small children and dogs were buffeted to the side, and Ignis was drenched within two seconds. His shoes squelched as he walked towards Gladio’s family home, which sat on a corner five blocks down, and his hair fell out of its gelled spikes and hung limp in his eyes.

Two blocks in, Ignis passed a couple taking shelter under a shop awning. Their arms were wrapped around each other, they were dripping a puddle onto the sidewalk, and they were laughing softly. Ignis glared at them and stomped onward. 

“I am not,” he shouted, into the deafening crash of rain, “the heroine of a _regency romance!_ ”

“You tell ‘em, honey,” said a woman ticketing a moped nearby. Ignis flushed and picked up the pace. 

The Amicitia home was just beyond a small bridge over one of Insomnia’s many canals, which would have been scenic if it weren’t for the garbage that pedestrians threw in every hour of the day. Fast food bags and cans of beer rustled cheerily at the banks as Ignis marched over the bridge, gaze fixed firmly on his ruined shoes. 

When he collided with what felt like a brick wall and went rolling into a gutter, Ignis almost laughed. 

“Shit! Iggy?” Oh, god, no. Gladio emerged from the rain, still shirtless and frantic with worry, his broad shoulders squared against the downpour as he grabbed Ignis by the arms. Ignis’ feet skidded on the concrete and hooked around Gladio’s, sending them both reeling to the ground. Gladio landed on top of him, arms braced on either side of Ignis’ head, and Ignis looked up through a curtain of dark hair into shadowed, amber eyes. 

“Uh,” Gladio said. “Sorry about that.”

Ignis dragged his teeth over his lower lip. 

“About what Noct said.” Gladio took a short breath. “I didn’t want to… It doesn’t have to change anything—“

“I want to end this, Gladio,” Ignis said. Gladio blinked rapidly, and Ignis went on, rain pouring into his mouth and stinging his eyes as he spoke. “The pretense, the false—“

“Yeah.” Gladio’s voice was tight, strained. “I get it.”

“No, you _don’t._ ” Ignis reached up to grab a shirt that wasn’t there, and ended up brushing his knuckles against Gladio’s abs. Oh, _hell._ “I want to date you properly, you utter—I’ve apparently held a torch for you for years, and what I—what I mean to say is—“ All the words Ignis knew so well, the ones that had turned the eyes of the world his way, the ones that he used to build himself entire universes, finally failed him. “I want to go to brunch with you for the rest of my life, Gladio.”

Gladio’s face, frozen in a mixture of shock and disbelief, softened into a smile. “Yeah?” he said. Ignis grit his teeth together. “Yeah, we can do that. We can definitely do that.”

“Good,” Ignis said, and, before either of them could think better of it, grabbed Gladio’s face and kissed him soundly on the mouth.

A bicycle bell jingled overhead. “Get out of the fucking street, assholes!”

They rolled properly onto the sidewalk, a tangle of limbs and heaving breath, and Gladio beamed at Ignis so widely that he looked on the verge of laughter. “Shower at our place?” he asked. “My dad’s making ribs tonight.”

“That,” Ignis said, covered in rain and street muck and happier than he’d been in years, “sounds absolutely wonderful.”

 

\---

 

“And that’s it for the reading, folks!” Prompto Argentum clapped his hands, standing before Ignis’ table dressed in what he probably thought of as respectable business-wear, but looked more like a soft punk trying to sneak into a government building. His hair was spiked again, thick enough with product that it would crackle if Ignis tapped on it, and he had a clipboard full of drawings under his arm. “Thank you for coming! We loved you! Didn’t we, Iggy?”

Ignis shrugged, and the crowd tittered. At Ignis’ side was a stack of his newest book, _Kingslaid,_ which was already lauded by critics—including Ms. Lalia P. Hankwell herself—as the year’s smash hit of the genre. Prompto looked over his shoulder at Ignis and winked, and Ignis gave him a weary smile. 

Gladio clapped Ignis’ shoulder in one large hand and pulled up a chair beside him as a line began to form. “You did great,” he said, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. Ignis turned his head and kissed him back, then looked to the woman standing at the table before him. She had a copy of _Pounded in the Astral_ clutched to her chest, and she stared at them both with a wide, awed expression.

“Wow,” she said. “No wonder you write them big.”

Gladio coughed, smothering a laugh. “Thank you,” Ignis said, giving Gladio a warning look. “I think.”

“I’m sort of working on something myself,” the woman said, placing the book in front of Ignis. “Make it out to Aerith, please. Or Aeris, either way. I have a question, actually, if that’s alright. How do you get over writer’s block, personally?”

Gladio nudged Ignis’ foot under the table, and Ignis’ cheeks colored. He smiled and folded his hands over the book. 

“Well,” he said. “I found that for me, the best thing is to set the story down for a moment and take care of yourself. You know…” He jostled his leg, dislodging Gladio’s hand from his thigh, “gain a little _experience._ ”


End file.
